Marginalia

The edges of another's work
were all the space
she had for her story.
With grease and lamp black,
a fine point, she set down
her worth  in small letters
that she might abide.
Perhaps you will glimpse her.

:: Isabel Zuber, in The American Voice #29 (1992)

Groundskeeper

The hose man is a shy one,
hands dug into pockets
and hat making shadows
on his all-weather radial tire face.
His Lincoln is a golfcart with a pick-up bed
tack-welded over the engine.
He wants to make things green.

Some mornings he starts
a half hour before the shift,
hose upon hose, mist upon mist.
As the sun climbs tiny rainbows appear.
He is smiling. On some days he canticles.
Every now and then he looks at the sky.
It seems dry up there.

:: Barrett Warner, in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review #6 (1995)

Friday Lunchbreak

At noon, still wearing their white
plastic helmets and long smocks,
they leave the frozen slabs
of calf hanging from aluminum
hooks on the loading docks
and stride down the street
past my window, headed
for the bank on the corner.
I remember the gray calf we found
last spring in Virginia, hidden
by its mother in a gully;
at six days it scampered
and wobbled.
                     We watched
it grow heavy and slow, until
half a year later, fouled
with its own shit and dull of eye,
it stood with the other cattle,
hock-deep in muck by the barn.

Then it was gone, perhaps north
to this gallows place, where the men
tromp back, grinning, some with bottles
in brown paper sacks, these men
in spattered white smocks
who are as thick and wide
as the sides of beef they hug
and wrestle, angels of meat.

:: Gregory Orr, The Red House

Shucking

My father lets down
The little drawbridge of his pickup truck,
A span of plywood planks on the back gate
Held level by hook and chain,
And dumps from the damp burlap
A load of locked doors
We've bough to break and enter,
Taking our spade-sharped knives
To the sharp and silted ridges of the oyster shells.

Almost safe inside the heavy canvas gloves,
Mule-brand, the fingers chewed through
By snags of ragged metal his acetylene
Cut back from the junked bodies of cars,
We look for leeways in the trap,
Any edge the blade can pry and widen,
Leverage to spring the hinge. I set aside
The hard ones for my father's savvy hands.
From the lusters of the bottom lid,
We split the raw attachments
And pour it all in a plastic pail--
Brine and gill plates and mantle--
My mother's turn now to turn
This plump meat seasoned by the sea
Into soups and stews and poboy loaves
(Dredged in cornmeal, drowned in deep fat).

It's one more long Sunday when dinner waits
For my brother to drive down, late,
Through the pinesap airs of Hammond,
And for my sister to bring herself, late,
Across the white bridges, twin humps
On the billowed back of Lake Pontchartrain.

And so my father and I stand opening
The closed chambers, the cold valves,
And from these cups of calcium
Drink to each other a liquid
Of salt and grit, the oysters
Easing down like lumps in the throat.

:: Elton Glaser, in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review #2 (1993)

Trash

That day the most beautiful thing she saw was pigeons.
Neatly dressed in grey and silver stripes, or snuff brown,
like office workers, except the shocking ascot, the neck
oilslick green and purple, the finicky pink naked feet.

Walking barefoot in broken glass and crushed paper cups,
what are the pigeons learning? Assiduously searching through
the scattered trash of human lives, they startle Beatrice.
She's used to them flying by like windblown plastic bags.

Now she's fixed by one scavenger eye, coy,
shy, trash with consciousness. The bird cocks its head
sideways, feminine wile, a friend's attention. Suddenly

       she's standing in a city peopled by birds, their hub-bub
       conversation, and their wheeling flight toward home, the rock
       cliffs of skyscraper and church steeple, each cranny and nook
       they remember from when they nested there, rockdove
       high above the river in the granite palisades, long before
       convenient niche apartments were built for them by men.

:: Minnie Bruce Pratt, Walking Back Up Depot Street (1999)

Doing Beans

Treva brought a grocery bag of cukes,
inked on the side, FREE TAKE

ALL YOU WONT. Mid-morning break,
Charlie picks each one out, rolls it

hand to hand. Pauline calls from the booth,
"You ain't quality control. Quit handling 'em."

She laughs, words punching smoke that spurts
from her nose and mouth at the same time.

She's working on her eighteenth year in sewing.
Across the table, Treva, working on her third,

sips iced tea from a silver thermos,
worries a cut on her right hand, stirring

last night's late squash--today's cold lunch--
with a plastic spoon, not hungry.

Up past midnight doing beans, three canners,
eighteen quarts. Tonight she'll do it again for Mama.

Fingers tight from stringing, she's wasted
half the morning sewing M sleeves into S torsos,

fumbling with the bobbin, mind drifting, thinking
about beans, beans, more beans, coming in faster

than cut fabric to her bin.
Tired as she is, knowing what's ahead,

that 3:00 whistle's no relief today.
"You can buy 'em at the grocery two for a dollar,"

her sister keeps saying. "Just as good. Better."
"Get your head on your machine," Pauline tells her,

"or there won't be no machine."
Charlie drops coins in the drink slot,

knuckles the Coke button, slides in beside her.
"Ain't nothing free, Treva."

July sun burns through the glass window of the break room.
Not much growing outside but cars, packed tight.

Slide your knife down the inside edge of the jar,
Mama taught her. Gets rid of air, trapped inside.

:: Barbara Presnell, Piece Work
(Cleveland State University Press, 2007)

Sanding Floors

Caught between agriculture and industry
I tread grained rows
I grind up golden dust
triceps flexed and small of back strained
behind a tumbling drum sander
a silver juggernaut with blue sparking motor
ravenous teeth on a roll under my control
short leashed it grumbles
I follow in cloudy plastic goggles
black rubber respirator a filtered trunk
like an elephant-headed deity of the hearth
like an astronaut harvesting the moon
I scour these oaken floors with heavy gravity

36 Grit
Like lamprey's teeth on a steel cylinder
to gouge and tear in long splinters
through the black carpet backing
through the ancient dried glue
through the glaring waxed finish
I grind on through these old boards' tattoos

60 Grit 
More precious now like a
granddad's whiskered cheek
to a goodnight kiss
spun round to ride the channeled waves
knocking off their curls their
whitecaps churned beneath
harnessed horses' hooves and teeth
to flow soft upon the floory shore

100 Grit
Sharkskin smooth for a final run
amber waves of grain all raised
a heightened vibrancy arises
hearts' secrets brought up to the surface
with democratic leveling to stand
equal individual and
nakedly alive

I walk these planks in noise and dust
to make a home out of this house
I am the reaper of rough
I am the sower of smooth

:: W. Joe Hoppe, in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review #6 (1995)